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Fernand Khnopff

Belgian, 1858 - 1921

Memories

Date: 1889

The picture has a dream-like quality that memory conveys and, as so often with Khnopff, evokes a sense of tension and suspense. It was shown at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1890 as The Tennis Party. Khnopff himself was a frequent visitor to England in the 1890s and admired British art which he helped to popularise in Belgium. In particular he knew Burne-Jones, whose painting The Mill has a number of points in common with this painting - the group of girls, the evening light, the deliberately 'charged' atmosphere and unspecified subject matter.